Tale of Arwen
by Vendelyn Silverhawk
Summary: Arwen contemplates the years ahead, now that Aragorn is dead.


When I gave Aragorn my heart it kept him as young as I, and many years were added to his life, but by seventy his hair had begun to silver and his body to wither and decay. The bitter cycle of mortality had at last struck, and in what seemed to me to be the blink of an eye, but to the mortals was forty years, he was gone. The King of Gondor of a hundred and ten years, seventy of those spent ruling, was at last dead and gone, and laid to rest in a tomb of stone in the ruins outside of Minas Tirith.

That day I saw the prophecies of my father play out exactly as he told me on the day I almost chose to leave Middle Earth and live forever across the sea. I even wore the same veil of mourning as in his vision as I stood beside my husband's tomb and wept silver tears upon the stone likeness of him that was carved over the body. Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, had passed out of the world forever, and entered a world I knew would be forever barred to me.

I stayed in Minas Tirith with my son and grandsons and great-grandsons for a time, and watched them rule from the marble throne that was carved for me in the middle of the great hall of the castle. I watched them for years and years, and saw death come to my descendants until they were nothing but a line of tombs and blank faces that I knew were my kin, and yet I could not name. After my son Estel died, and his children after him, I ceased to care about the mortal droves that were the offspring of Arwen and Aragorn. I ceased to care about life, and everything that it implied, until I became a stone queen upon a stone throne, and the people of Minas Tirith would no longer tolerate an elf in their noble city.

I left, grateful, almost, for the excuse to, and I retreated to the ruins of Rivendell to watch the last of my people leave. There were few elves left yet in Middle Earth, and they were all gathered on the shores, waiting for the next ship, and the one after that until they were nothing but ghosts. Long-forgotten shadows that held the empty promise of escape.

Legolas of the Fellowship of the Ring came to stay with me for a time in Rivendell, but the forlorn bones of the once-great city and my grief-ridden mind brought back his grief for the dwarf Gimli. A truer friend he never had, I knew, and the pain of his passing was yet too fresh for Legolas to endure in Middle Earth. He kept company with me for a few years, but each of us was mourning and eventually his sorrow led him across the sea on the very last ship the Silvan took out of Middle Earth.

After that it came to pass that at last I was the last of my people in Middle Earth, and I resided quietly in the skeletal structures of Rivendell which once filled me with such peace, but now where shades of their former beauty. A grave shadow had passed over my world and forever would I see in shades of grey, hearing the truth in my father's words whenever I looked at the world around me.

Mankind once again grew greedy and restless, and their wars spanned centuries until most of Middle Earth was either ruin or empire. The dwarves tunneled so deep within their mountains that they became the products of myth and legend, and the hobbits were so quiet that they, too, soon faded from the pages of history. And all through this the rain of my grief was never-ending, until the paths that I walked and the trees that bent to comfort me became imbibed with it as well. Lothlorien, that place of supposed peace which I fled to when Rivendell was still too painful a reminder, was soon a place where the unending sadness of an immortal heart was heard with every breath of wind, the bubble of the shallow stream, the whisper of the leaves. Every memory of the people who once inhabited the great forest was erased under the wave of my numbed existence, until men referred to Lothlorien as the forest of tears, for all who entered would hear my pain.

Aragorn- oh Aragorn, why did you leave me? I would cry out to the trees, and every time it rained my dears would mix with the puddles until every drop tasted of salt. I gave my heart to a man, and would have given my immorality if I could have, but the light of Elendiel never truly leaves an elf, and so the wraith I have become will live on forever.

Forever will the trees whisper to travelers the tale of Arwen and Aragorn, and tell of the Grey Lady who now resides in the peaceful Lothlorien wood. For eternity will even the animals avoid my touch, for I poison every living thing around me with my sadness, and for a thousand years no flower in the forest will bloom in color, for my arrival leached every bit of happiness from the land. Until at last the day came when my heart could bear it no longer, and I lay down in the middle of the deserted tree-homes of Lothlorien, and gave myself peace. Perhaps now the forest can rest, and lock me in a coffin of flowers and branches to seal my misery with me, till some unsuspecting creature tries to wake me again.

Let me fade like the rest into the world of myth and legend. Let history forget my name, and race, and story- it makes no matter now. For I will sleep as long as the stars watch over me, until the waters of the west wash over this land and even the Golden Home beyond the sea cease to be. Then I will see him again, my Aragorn, and my heart will know peace.

_ From darkness I understand the night_  
_Dreams flow, a star shines_  
_Ah! desire Evenstar_

_Look! A star rises out of the darkness_  
_The song of the star enchants my heart_  
_Ah! I desire..._


End file.
